The Courtship
by alena
Summary: Many years after Celebrían was brutally murdered, a summons to Lórien brings to life a small mad hope in Elrond's heart. AU. Chapter 10 up: Visions mirrored in the waters of Lórien, and a connection is made through words out of another age.
1. One

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

_Note:_ Great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading, and to Rose Red for giving me the idea.

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**The Courtship**

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One

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The late sunlight slanted between the green-draped hills, flashing among the trees. In the reflected glow, the road into the valley shimmered like a mysterious, flowing river. On the road was a solitary rider, his shadow lengthening over the river's dappled surface, black hair fluttering out in the wind. He held his gaze straight ahead, lost in thought, as the road bent gently and dipped, and the fair forests of Lórien rose beckoning on the horizon.

In another Lórien he had once danced upon the sweet grass, sweeping Celebrían up in his arms, spinning and spinning, until she clung to him for breath, ringing with laughter, and the glittering stream of her hair was a starry blur. They slipped away from the crowd and embraced upon a carpet of golden _malinornë _flowers.

_Malinornë, lairelossë, taniquelassë _dusky with low-drooping boughs, _yavannamírë _clustered in a snowstorm of blossoms. It was spring. The air of Valinor was alive with birdsong and the music of falling waters. And he thought of Imladris with its riotous rivulets, and Celebrían sitting alone on the bank, her face half turned away from him, a book open on her lap. That time, he had stood long and still in the distance watching her, his heart born aloft by such a feeling of tenderness, that he never imagined the future, never imagined that he would betray her.

Seven springs in the Blessed Land. The world brimmed over with beauty; at times he could imagine being at peace here, at times he could almost imagine happiness. If only Celebrían...If only. If only. Those thoughts were nothing but disjointed and fragile whispers in his mind, and he kept--as always--to his silence.

Five hundred and nineteen springs since he had lost all peace. Once more, he saw the lights of the fading year in Middle-earth, felt the terrifying pain in his shoulder that had enveloped him in one searing instant, as a poisoned arrow, many miles away, found its mark. His own voice, unrecognizable with fear. Celebrían. The Redhorn Pass. Ambushed. The frantic thunder of galloping hooves, tearing into the dank fog that hung heavy over the mountain-range. At first, he had still heard Celebrían's tortured screams reverberating inside his mind, crying out to him, struggling to hold on in a dark desperate place. But it had been much worse when the screams faded, faint and intermittent, and finally fell silent. He had not been there for her. She had bled to death on the cold filthy floor of a cave in the mountain's black belly, alone.

Taking a deep breath, Elrond lifted his head, and kept his eyes resolutely on the road in front of him, now narrowing to a winding path through the woods, and on the young emerald leaves that were beginning to merge on the branches above, trembling softly and blurring in the sunset. If he were not to go completely mad it would be best to think only of the brief moment ahead, only of the here and now. He shook his head. Here and now. Someone must have decided that he needed healing. He would have tried to smile at the thought if he had the heart.

The summons had come by courier, a few courteously-worded lines in a strong flowing hand, requesting his presence at the Gardens. It is curious, Elrond reflected, that out of all the varied means the Master of Dreams possessed to bring him to Lórien, the Vala had chosen one that was somehow at once the least mystical and the most mysterious. For a long while, he had sat by his desk staring at the note, struggling to push away the strange agitation that kept bursting uninvited upon him, wondering whose doing it could have been. He could envision all too well the expression of rueful concern on Erestor's face, and Glorfindel--Glorfindel would just have insisted upon coming along. As for the others...He doubted that he could have managed being comforted again just then, so in the end he had simply packed a few things, and slipped away without a word.

A single petal, dancing slowly in the breeze, settled on his shoulder like a sigh. Above, the boughs were heavy with flowers, pale and blushing, bending low, brushing against his hair. The laced branches were closing over his head, and soon a living tunnel of leaves and blossoms formed before him, wavering and whispering, stretching into the blue dusk. Dismounting, he stood facing the tunnel's gate for a moment, then walked in, leading his horse after him. The ground underfoot was soft and smooth with grass, and each leaf of the forest seemed to murmur with its own voice. Behind his back, the world disappeared without a sound.

Looking up, he glimpsed a point of warm yellow light in the distance, flitting towards him along the path. At first a mere twinkling firefly, it gradually resolved into a slim form carrying a lamp.

"Master Elrond?"

A young Elf stood before him, long hair flickering gold in the lamp's glow.

"Welcome to Lórien, my lord." He bowed with a smile. "Please, follow me. Lord Irmo and Lady Estë are expecting you."

The twilight darkened around them as they went. To Elrond's questions, the youth would only reply that the Master of the Gardens would explain all. About their feet, a delicate mist began to spread in swirling filigrees, illumined by the small shifting pool of lamplight and the occasional star-gleam filtering through the leaves. It seemed to Elrond that he was crossing a great distance with each footfall. He was walking on dreams.

The evening was already deep when the woods suddenly parted, and he emerged from an arch of rustling boughs into a downpour of starlight. He was standing in a little grassy clearing, speckled with tiny nodding flowers, yellow and silver. On one side, the ground sloped gently down to the shore of a vast, shining lake, dotted with shadowy islands. His guide had gone.

Behind him, someone was approaching with quick, silent steps. Turning around, he saw white dress and golden hair glimmering in the light of the newly-risen moon. It was Galadriel.

How irrational it was, Elrond thought, this inexplicable apprehension that descended so abruptly upon him at the sight of her. It was not so unimaginable, or even so unlikely, that she would come also to the Gardens. Not at all. Stifling the unexpected wings that trembled inside his chest, he strode across the grass to meet her. Yet those wings were still fluttering when he was at her side, taking her hand in his, bending his lips to it. But Galadriel pulled him into an embrace.

"Elrond, _ion-nîn_," she murmured. Her eyes were bright, more so than he had ever remembered seeing, and it was with a small inward shiver of surprise that he realized that they were lit with the reflections of recent tears. But she was smiling.

"Come."

She took his arm and began to lead him across the glade. The first drops of dew were glistening on the grass, and the beams of the moon spilled about them, brimming over from the lake's silvery surface, mingling softly with the mist. Glancing at Galadriel beside him, he found her looking thoughtfully ahead, not meeting his eyes or his questions. He could hear his own heart beating harder with every step. There was some change in her that he could not or dared not fathom, in the smile on her face and the tears in her eyes, in the almost-tremulous touch of her hand on his arm. Finally, as they came beneath a tall bank of fragrant _lavaralda_ overflowing with new tendrils at the clearing's edge, he halted his steps and went no further.

"What is it?" His words were a mere whisper.

Stopping also, she turned to face him, and all of a sudden it was again the Galadriel he knew so well before him, standing tall and flawlessly composed, her gaze as grave and piercing as the stars upon his face. A long moment passed wordlessly. He did not know if she found what she sought in him, but she seemed to come to a decision.

"Celebrían has returned from the Halls of Mandos," she said at last in a low clear voice.

Despite the madness of what he would only later recognize as his hope, it took him a moment to regain his bearings. At first, he was certain that it was all an illusion, and that he was being tormented again. But as he stood there Galadriel remained in front of his eyes; he could feel the pressure of her hand against his arm. And the Gardens of Lórien--the whispering voices of the trees, the glistening grass, the air--everything remained around him and did not fade. It came to him that this was real. Her words were thundering in his ears. Celebrían. The Halls of Mandos. Returned.

"Where is she?"

Galadriel shook her head. Her fingers tightened slightly on his arm.

"You will see her, Elrond. Soon." She paused, searching carefully for the words. "But not yet. One cannot come back from death without loss and sorrow, _ion-nîn_. She is not the same, and neither are you. Are you ready for her return?"

"Where is she?" he repeated. The pounding of his heart was such that his chest was about to burst wide open any instant now.

"Ah, Master Elrond," said a soft voice behind them.

They both turned. Galadriel let go of his arm. Slowly, Elrond let out a long breath that he did not know he had been holding. The lady before them was slender and grey-eyed, robed in deep blue; her dark hair cascaded down loose and liquid about her, mingling with the cool spring night. She was as still and luminous as the lake rippling towards the horizon.

"Master Elrond," said Estë gently, "Celebrían does not remember you now."


	2. Two

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

Great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading.

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**The Courtship**

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Two

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For a long time, she was endless and empty, and her eyes held only the reflections of passing clouds. A low gentle sound washed over her, a constant crooning of innumerable voices, or perhaps of one voice only. She knew naught but a vast, slow peace.

Gradually, she realized that her eyes were open. She was staring at something above, immense and very, very far away. It was transparent, and blue.

Blue. Perfectly, burningly blue. Infinitely blue.

_The sky._

All around her--the low voices, calling, flowing, cradling. It was the sound of the breeze amid leaves and branches.

It was the sound of her breath.

She was lying on her back, arms outspread, the ground tender and fragrant beneath her. With an effort, she shifted slightly, turning her head. The tips of her fingers closed upon the small delicate things that were brushing so softly against her hand. Blades of grass, and tiny white flowers.

And suddenly, in a blazing instant, the sunlight burst into wild conflagrations in every direction, and her pulse turned to a pounding storm. A gasping cry clenched at her throat. The air, blindingly bright, shattered about her like glass. Struggling, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her body shook and would not stop shaking. Heedless of both the chill of the wind on her skin and the new, terrifying sensation of her own weight, she braced her arms against the green earth, and scrambled madly to her feet.

Almost immediately, her knees turned to water. She swayed, lost her balance. But at that moment a pair of hands, previously unseen, reached out to her and caught her under the arms.

"Do not be afraid."

The voice was soothing in her ears, and though she still shivered, the world slowly stopped spinning. She found herself staring into a face beautiful as the dawn, framed in deep falling gold. A pair of grey eyes met her gaze, and took her heart, for they were brimming with tears--tears of grief, yet also flashing with a fierce, powerful joy.

"There, there, my child...Put your hands on my arms..."

A cloak was thrown around her bare shoulders. Half-leaning against the other woman, she stood steady at last. A patch of sun ringed them upon the fair grass, and a circle of trees with upswept, blossom-clad boughs.

"Thank--you," she managed, after some difficulty.

Tears gleamed in lovely grey eyes, and the golden-haired woman pulled her closer. She was trembling a little.

"Dear child." The whispered words came like caresses. "Celebrían..."

She caught a breath at the sound of the last word. "Celebrían..." she repeated slowly. It felt right. It felt like some warm glowing thing within her. Celebrían. Celebrían.

"That is...my name?"

Yet even as the words were on her lips, it seemed to her that the ground was again slipping under her feet. Her name, and--nothing. She was clinging onto the glimmering word. But beyond the small flicker of light there was only black space.

"Yes, yes, Celebrían, it is your name, it is you..."

The beautiful lady smiled, touching her face lightly. The day was brilliant all around them, and somehow the fear began to recede. Together, they walked out from the sun-drenched meadow, and passed through the woods along a grassy, winding path, until at last they came to the shore of a great lake, bright-scaled and calm, and a fair house set upon the shore amid fountains and murmuring groves. There, she was clad in fresh white raiments, and a gentle dark-headed maiden brought her food and drink. She discovered that she was ravenous. The lady with golden hair remained with her, and never, not for even an instant, did the gaze of those grey eyes leave her face. Grateful, Celebrían reached up and caught her by the hand.

"My lady..."

She left the questions to the air. The other woman drew in a quick breath, hesitant and seemingly struggling with some suppressed emotion, and for a brief moment a strange sensation of lightness fell upon Celebrían, a faint stirring of something far away and familiar, of swift rivers beneath a canopy of shining trees, and a young voice laughing. Yet in the space of a single breath, it was gone, and there was nothing but roiling emptiness once again. Abruptly, her heart twisted with shame, and she lowered her eyes. But then she felt the touch of lips upon her brow, as loving as all the dreams and memories that could have been, all the wonders lost to the shadows.

"My name is Galadriel," said the golden-haired woman softly.

In the days that followed, Celebrían walked upon the sands along the lake's edge, and through the gardens in the light of the morning. She looked at the green vines tangled against the walls and the gates of the house, and at the intricate ever-shifting foliage against the spring sky. She looked at the open waters and at the myriad stars of the night. She looked at the gaping gulf between the living, burgeoning air of the present and the blankness of her past--for surely, surely there must have been a past--and a restless fear welled up within her.

At times, she was suspended over that gulf, the vertiginous abyss, and vast cold distances opened up beneath her. At other times, she was filled with a strange, bubbling gladness that ran warm and clear like a stream through the blood of her body. At times it seemed that the waves would part, and there would be a brief impression, a possibility of remembrance, a moment of sorrow. Towards these shimmering things she would stretch out her hands, only to watch them slip between her fingers and vanish once more into the depths. But not always. Once, she found herself clasping close the taste of a berry, fresh and sweet out of another day in another land--out of her youth. Once, it was the touch of cool, smooth fabric against the skin of her arms, but though she racked her mind she could not find out whence it had come. A snatch of song. An ephemeral minute of childhood. She hoarded the precious flotsam as if they were jewels.

She stood before the mirror, and saw a tall slender woman with fair features and strong, lithe limbs; long silver hair lay like glistening water on her shoulders. Her eyes were blue. And all of a sudden her heart was heavy with a tremendous ache, for the incompleteness of it all, for the unknown something missing in the image, the something--someone?--missing in her. She leaned close into the mirror, staring and searching hard, but the reflection had no more answers than she.

In a room of the house there stood a harp. Tentatively, she put her hands on it, and her fingers remembered the strings. She plucked a note, then another. The sound was like the movement of a gentle breeze, and out of the breeze a chord lingered with her. Slowly, there emerged the beginning of a melody, a lone voice that stirred and wavered, rising just a few steps, then turning in melancholy, dipping low. But it ended there, a key for which she had no door. For several days, she played the phrase again and again, though the next one never followed.

In the _malinornë _forest behind the house, the clustered flowers were a ceiling of pale gold, and the leaves fell like rain. She stood in the rain, as an impossible happiness descended upon her, and she began to run, weaving among the majestic grey trunks, through the dappling shade. She was a small child running through a different forest of _malinorni_, and well-loved voices were calling out to her.

The silent gardens, the lowering twilight. Fleetingly it seemed that she caught sight of another little girl with hair as dark as the deep evening, smiling radiantly, skipping down the steps. It was both a memory and a sweet, clear vision. She longed to go to that child, but the mirage soon faded, and without knowing why, tears started in her eyes.

Often, Galadriel walked with her, or sat with her in the sleepless nights. They spoke of the names of trees and flowers, or of the flying birds and the constellations. More than once, Celebrían caught herself struggling with the questions that clamoured on the tip of her tongue, of who she had been, what had happened to her, of the glinting shards of her own self and the wide-torn gaps, yet she spoke no word, though her chest constricted with the terror of asking and the frustration of not knowing. But these feelings would pass as she looked into the older woman's eyes, for there was a light in them that comforted her, and told her there was no need to fear now, and hope in waiting.

One day, she went alone from the house and wandered through the forest, arriving at last to a narrow inlet of the lake, secluded among the green shadows. Sitting on the shore, she watched the afternoon light lengthen over the lapping waves. And as the sun was just setting, it seemed that before her eyes the inlet widened out to an endless expanse, and a memory stole upon her, to carry her across an age of the world.

She had been a young Elf-girl of twenty, and it was her first visit to the sea. Her parents walked hand in hand along the beach, but she sprinted on ahead upon the snowy sand.

"Don't run out of sight, Celebrían!"

She spun around, laughing, and waved at the white-clad figures far behind, down the beach.

"I won't, _Naneth_!"

The clouds raced across the open sky. She kept on running, racing with them, while the strong rhythmic breakers embraced her feet...

When she returned again, she was smiling. The dusk had long since passed, and moonlight was rippling on the waters. Rising to her feet, she turned quietly away from the lake, and began to retrace her steps up the path, back to the house. The smile remained on her face as she went, and her gaze was pensive.

Halfway through the woods, there was a small stream lying across the trail, singing softly beneath the stars. As Celebrían stepped onto the little footbridge over the stream, she stopped abruptly.

Something was different; someone was there across the stream, though she could not yet see him. A presence was reaching out to her from the shadows, inexplicable, like a long low note, the phrase of music that she could not recall. She stood there on the bridge, absolutely still, peering into the darkness, and her heart leapt like a wild doe.


	3. Three

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading.

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**The Courtship**

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Three

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"You are hungry," said Estë, pushing a plate across the table towards him.

He was, Elrond realized. But food was out of the question.

On the terrace, the breeze fluttered through the overhanging branches, and a sprinkling of pink petals lay at their feet. He sat outwardly calm, trying to comprehend the words that seemed to flow in the air around his head. The world had, more or less, pieced itself back together, but the minutes still passed with leaden sluggishness.

"The memories will come but gradually, for they have a long passage of years to travel." Estë's words were as gentle raindrops. "The eyes that perceive them will not be the same, but they will come."

She stopped. Elrond felt a familiar stab from inside.

"All the memories," added Estë, in answer to a question he did not ask.

All the memories he had of a previous life. Would they help her? Would they help him? Despite all his controls, a part of his mind was already racing wild through the _niphredil_-sweet, moon-bright gardens. In their previous life, she would have already unerringly found his presence and answered his cries. But as had been pointed out to him, things were different now.

"Some of the paths, of the past and the present, she will walk with your hand in hers; some paths she will tread alone..."

"You--both of you--have waited long, suffered grief and fears; I will not tell you that you shall never encounter them again in the times to come..."

To one side, he saw Galadriel, who had so far said little, watching him intently, her gaze keen and thoughtful. He knew there were no words with which to reassure her.

"Her body has been newly remade, and it will be the mind that remembers the wounds..."

Body and mind, he repeated voicelessly. There was no speaking of the heart, or of the soul. Could it be possible, Celebrían, that you would love me again?

"The soul is and has always been the same, as it ever shall be," replied Estë, although again he had not asked the question. "But as to the heart I can offer you no advice."

"Yet you make it sound much too fearful, my lady." It was the Master of Dreams that spoken now. Elrond lifted his eyes, and found Irmo considering him kindly, with a half-quizzical expression on his face, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of the real depth of the other's eyes, unfathomable, unimaginable. Still he kept on looking into them.

"She'll be fine, Elrond," said the Vala with a smile. "As will you, I think."

"I would like to see her now." He kept the tremor out of his voice. Mostly.

Irmo grinned. Shifting slightly in his seat, he pointed to a corner of the garden. Looking over, Elrond saw a low gate in the hedge that he had not noticed before, half-open, half-hidden by the shadows, and the beginning of a path that led into the woods. 

"She was walking by the lake earlier, I believe." The Vala turned to Estë, a gleam in his eyes. "Was she not, my dear?"

An unseen nightingale was warbling in the trees as Elrond began to make his way down the trail. The voice was soft and wavering, soon becoming lost behind him in the muffled breeze, but after a pause the song would start anew: another singer, trilling on another branch far in front. Perhaps it was the same bird, he thought, following his steps, or calling him on. He was glad of the distraction somehow.

He had been walking all night--or perhaps it had been only a short while--when he saw a pool of silvery-blue moonbeams from an opening in the forest, just ahead. The edge of the canopy revealed a sleepy little stream beneath the heavens, overarched by a tiny wooden bridge. For some reason, his feet slowed as he drew near, as if not yet ready to carry him from the darkness. The nightingale was gone. And then he saw her.

It were the same quick graceful steps, the same crown of moonlight upon her head. She was coming up the path across the stream, coming closer every step. Now he could see her face, the faint smile of her lips, same as he remembered, the brightness of her eyes, blue as he remembered. The pensive expression of those eyes. With an abrupt agitation he realized that he could not recall if that, too, was the same--

To his own shock, he took a step back deeper into the shadows. But at that same instant Celebrían stopped, suddenly and perfectly still. All the twinkling stars of the sky halted with her. Immediately, Elrond knew she was aware of him, as much as she was aware of the night's boundless silence. She must have heard his heart beating. Waiting no longer, he stepped out into the tremulous light.

Celebrían, he wanted to cry out. This moment I never thought would come.

She was standing there motionless, her hand on the railing of the bridge. At his approach, her eyes widened imperceptibly, and she drew in a sharp breath.

"Do not be startled, please," he said quickly.

Her gaze followed him as he stepped onto the bridge. Something passed in them, and he recognized it, with a low pang, as the fleeting cloud of confusion.

"Forgive me," she said at last. Her voice was also the same, except for the hesitation, which he never remembered. "I am afraid that things--do not come easily to me now. There is something that..." She struggled a little with the words. "Something in you, kind sir, that seems familiar to me, somehow. Did we, perhaps, know each other from...past times?"

She was only a few feet away. If he took another step forward he could have touched her. He was going to say it all, say everything, but in the end he could barely nod.

"Yes. We did. From past times. We knew each other."

Facing him, she flushed slightly, but did not look away.

"This is terribly forward of me, I fear. But you were...a friend?"

A friend, a mere friend. You were all of me, Celebrían. You were air and water, bliss, torment, hope, grace, guide. Oh Ríanna!

"Yes, a friend." He took a deep breath. "My name is Elrond," he said.

She smiled, the moonlight on her face both warm and a little unsure. Those blue eyes of hers, which were infinitely familiar and a complete stranger's eyes, were still focused on his face.

"Elrond," she repeated slowly, almost inaudibly. Or maybe she had not really whispered the name, and it had been his imagination only. "And my name--but my name you know already, of course."

He nodded again.

"It is Celebrían," she added anyway.

A pause followed, awkward and complicated. It came to Elrond that despite everything he had no idea what to say next. She could disappear like a dream again. But no. She was here in front of his eyes, in the middle of this forest, in the depth of this luminous night. They were staring at each other like tongue-tied children. With the practice of five hundred years and more, he thrust back the ache.

"My lady. Celebrían." He had to pronounce that name no matter how badly his voice betrayed him. "We were friends in the past, and all my heart wishes that we shall be, again. If you will allow me."

"I am glad of that, lord," she said gently.

Oh, the eyes. The light of her eyes was definitely the same as he remembered.

"It is late." He knew he was trying to smile, and this time, he thought that he managed it. "We should get back."

"Oh, yes, of course." Celebrían, too, seemed to come out of her reverie. As they stepped away from the bridge, out of instinct or kindness or perhaps mere courtesy, she laid her hand lightly on his arm.

The touch was like lightning, and for a moment his overwhelming and only impulse was to pull her into his arms. It was so simple and so obvious a thing. He could not have counted the times...But at his sudden tension Celebrían pulled back slightly, embarrassed, breaking the contact. With a swift movement he caught her hand.

"Please," he murmured.

She glanced up, meeting his gaze, and for the rest of the walk back to the house her hand remained warm on his arm, and his hand on top of hers. They did not exchange many words, but the silence softened and filled out between them, without either of them fully noticing it. Soon, the dim and dappled woods gave way to the gardens, then to the lamps of the house. At the door of her room, Celebrían turned to bid him good night.

But at that same instant, as she looked upon Elrond the mingled light of moon and candles fell across his face, and something made her heart rise suddenly to her throat. For a breath-time, she sensed the clamouring pressure of countless words, just beyond her reach, and he was stunningly and marvellously close. She almost cried out, despite that she knew not how, but in another heartbeat the feeling faded, and the man before her was simply not quite a stranger again.

"Thank you. Good night," she whispered, taking a small step back into the room, trying to regain her composure.

"Good night, my lady," Elrond replied, voice nearly as low as hers. Slowly, he turned away.

Varda's stars, as brilliant as hope and more numerous than tears, set the firmament ablaze. There were no more voices in the garden, not from the shadows, nor the flickering fountains, nor the nightingales hidden on green-quilted boughs. But the voices of memory rose and called and multiplied a thousandfold, as a son of Middle-earth wandered upon the edge of agony and exultation, in the night fragrant with _niphredil_ and early lilies, Valinor's blessed night.

He watched the house, counting the windows, careful to keep hers--there, third from the left, that would be hers, with the wide balcony and the tangle of creepers--always within sight. It was unlit now, but he felt that she, too, must still be awake. It was she, Celebrían, with that glance, that smile, that way she turned her head, that way her hand touched his arm. He recognized everything and nothing at all. How could anything possibly remain? How could she possibly ever be the same, after such a count of days, nights, years, shadows? After such a death as that she had endured?

But she would remember, wouldn't she? She would, maybe, come to remember him, and remember that time, just before the War, when they had stood holding hands for so much longer than they had known. Remember--maybe, maybe--those words that she had spoken, that time, which had burned so deeply into him that they went down to his bones. He could repeat them now, but she could not. And the embraces, the not-yet-one age of bliss, Elladan and Elrohir, and...Arwen.

And then she would remember the end. The stench of orcs and the firebrands. The jagged, black-bladed knives. And the blood. She had been so alone.

And then...

The night mellowed, enveloping the world in deep velvet draperies. The forest and the lake slept; the house slept. But the stars, the profuse and insistent stars all kept on asking, asking, asking the same questions, to which the over-brimming soul, though long accounted wise and by many, had not a single reply to offer.

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_Note:_ The term _ríanna_ is a Quenya cognate of the Sindarin _rían_ due to Vicente Velasco. ("Ríanna" by Vicente Velasco, Ardalambion.)


	4. Four

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

Thanks to Nemis for beta-reading, and to all the lovely people who have reviewed this.

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**The Courtship**

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Four

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The phrase of music was long and slow, and incandescent as the morning that lay golden upon her hair. At first, it was a voice in solitude, wavering and rising for just a few steps, then turning downwards in melancholy, searching. Now the notes of the lower register spoke in response, while the first voice, returning, circled and rose once more, as if touched by some faint and tender hope. Yet here the player hesitated, and the tune hovered on the strings, close to fading. She repeated the last few notes; it seemed to Elrond that they came from far-away places.

The first time he had heard the melody was on the Seventeenth of _Laer_, year 1701 in the Second Age of this world. Far in the past, and each moment in his memory clear and full as yesterday. It was the first time that he met her.

On that warm, green day, he had just returned from the north. Prompted by an impulse, he had left his horse to his companions, and climbed alone up the steep trail that switchbacked narrowly through the forest. Once more, he saw in his mind's eyes the cliffs above the house, where he had stood and gazed down upon the camps nestled in the arms of the valley. The slopes of Imladris still bore the marks of the recent siege, but the ground was already covered with the wild roses and sunbursts of early summer. He remembered the voices of the pines; mingled among them the breeze brought a low, distant humming--the bustle of saws and hammers from the main courtyards. Though the war was over for the moment, the stronghold would yet serve its purpose.

It was a long while before he descended again. He entered the house by a side door, through rough, deserted halls that had not so long ago quartered the wounded. Now the rooms lay empty but for a few sad and fair things--a finely carved flagstaff in the corner, a painting of a girl in its frame of silver vines leaning against the wall--which had somehow been rescued from Eregion against the ravages of chance and battle-flames. A feeling both temporary and mournful hung about them, like that of lost children. And then he heard the sound of a harp. Two or three simple tones stirred, soft and tentative, little more than an echo: the first few notes of an unknown melody. But he recognized the instrument: it was his own.

The tune bent gently to the lower register. The room from which it fluttered was only a short way down the corridor; it had stood bare when he last left for the moors, but now from the doorway Elrond saw that the floor was piled high with crates and packing-boxes, hiding the harper from view. Through the openings between the slats, he glimpsed patches of dark vellum and bright bindings, here and there a flash of embossed gold. His books from Lindon. It was then that a second and deeper voice entered upon the strings, seemingly to answer the first. Yet here the player hesitated, and a single note stretched out in mid-air, gradually vanishing to emptiness. It was repeated, then once more. Noiselessly he stepped around the stack of crates in front of him.

In a square of sunlight at the back of the room stood the tall, ornate harp that he had last seen in his own study, back in the house of the high king. A strange maiden was beside it, her hand lingering over one of the strings. With a small frown of concentration, she reached up for the peg, gave it a tiny turn, then plucked the note once again.

"I must apologize for the instrument being out of tune. It has been long untouched."

With a quick movement, the maiden spun around, letting her hands fall to her sides. The afternoon glow caught in her hair. She had blue eyes.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir." Her voice was rich-timbred, and almost startling for some reason, though he could not have explained precisely what it was that he had expected. "It is such a lovely instrument. Yet it seemed a little lonely, I feared."

Elrond came closer, joining her in the bright rectangle beneath the window. Slowly, he lifted a hand and touched a string. The sound was familiar, of course--and as remote as the other side of the sea.

"Does it?" he asked, the question really for himself. "Perhaps that is not so surprising. After all, it has been six years, and a long journey from Lindon."

She looked up, regarding him half-curiously, half-musingly, and he saw that she understood.

"I am sorry," she said. "Now I feel that it was out of my understanding. And my place."

"No, not at all," replied Elrond with a shake of the head. Already he was regretting having spoken too soon, too much. "There have been too few melodies of late. I am glad of it."

The maiden smiled, turning her head a little, and lightly ran her hand down the harp's elegant arch.

"But how foolish of me indeed, not to have seen. Surely it is Master Elrond himself to whom I speak, is it not?"

At his arched eyebrows, a merry gleam lit her eyes. How remarkable they were, he thought.

"You speak of the instrument as its master, my lord. It stands here, among an entire library in boxes from Lindon." She gestured at the crates surrounding them. "But these precious things are not meant to languish in a storeroom, surely. One can only surmise that they have just recently arrived, and are yet awaiting their owner--and I was told that the lord of the stronghold was away riding against the orc-bands that still plague the northern fells. And..." With a grin she patted the dark-stained wood. "Not to mention the Star of Eärendil engraved right here on the harp, Master Elrond."

"It is just Elrond, please. But you have the advantage of me, lady."

"Celebrían, daughter of Celeborn, my lord." She matched his bow with a graceful curtsey.

"How foolish of me indeed," said Elrond in perfect seriousness. "I should have surmised from your features and the unusual brightness of your hair--" (And from the joyful light of your eyes, he almost said) "--that you are not from Eregion, nor have I seen you in Lindon, at the house of the king. I did not expect you to arrive so soon, Lady Celebrían. Your father spoke much of you, yet in my excuse I must say that I imagined you as--much younger, from what he said."

"It is just Celebrían, please." She blushed at his words. "Mother and I arrived only yesterday. Yours is a very beautiful land, my lord."

She spoke earnestly, he could see. It was true that the valley was beautiful. If he had only come to it under different circumstances.

"I am sorry that I was not here to welcome Lady Galadriel and you to it; I would like to make my amends. Will you take me to your mother?"

To his surprise, Celebrían glanced away, and did not immediately reply.

"Oh, I am sure you will meet her soon," she said, hesitating. "After all, she and Father--what I mean is that we arrived only yesterday," she repeated, gazing into what must have been an expression of confusion on his face. Her cheeks were fast blooming like roses.

"Oh." Realization dawned upon Elrond, and he looked away briefly as well. It was only after a moment that he noticed that he had laid his hand against the pillar of the harp, next to hers.

"It was a striking melody that you played just now," he cast about, hoping to give her time to recover. "I would like to hear more of it."

Celebrían nodded. She seemed relieved.

"I will play it for you, from beginning to end."

It was not until much, much later that she'd finally written the tune down, at Arwen's insistence. He, of course, had not needed to see the music on paper by then. The piece had been within him as if it had always been there, since the day of his birth: the beginning to the end, the speaking and the response, two voices woven. It had remained silent ever since she was gone.

But now, her hands faltered. The melody, a fine thread, spun and flickered, beginning to slip between the strings. Amid uncertain shadows, Celebrían wavered, repeated the last chords, tried to catch hold of just a few more. The two lines tangled--no, that was wrong, she thought--what came next? She could not find it, the way back--and the phrase hovered in emptiness, between rising and falling...

And another voice caught it. A little distance away, she heard someone humming, very softly: the harmony suspended, then two tones down, then a gentle scale rippling forward. The phrase turned. Holding out her hands, she picked up the notes one by one, until the tune rose and crystallized to a single chord, not yet resolved. It glinted in the air for a long beat, all that remained, and was gone. Nothing more came.

Celebrían raised her eyes, and found Elrond standing there in the doorway, watching her pensively.

"Thanks for helping me out," she said with a smile.

He came into the room. The warm early light from the open windows caught in his grey eyes.

"I would play it for you, all the way to the end."

His voice was quiet and sounded perfectly serious. Celebrían studied him, not sure if he had meant it as an offer.

"It was only the beginning that I have remembered, was it not?" The question was rueful, even though she should have been glad. He must have known it well, the melody, she thought.

"Perhaps that is not so surprising," replied Elrond. "After all--after all it must have been a long while."

"Has it?" she asked, wondering at what might have been left out of his words. It was strange that she had never asked herself the question. "I only wish that I can find it complete. That I can know--know in truth--there is more." 

"There is." Another pause. She could tell that he was weighing and choosing each word with care. "Much, much more. The tune grows richer, more intricately entwined. More beautiful. To me."

What was it in his gaze that she could not read? How quickly the clouds filled those grey skies.

"There is something about this music," she said, frowning slightly, explaining the thing to herself, really. "As if it should be already within me--should have always been there. Like a key. Yet today was the first time that I have recalled more than merely the first line."

"The rest will come."

Celebrían lowered her eyes briefly. The rest will come. Perhaps. She stared at the harp, its varnish gleaming in the clear sun, and at Elrond's right hand laid casually against the pillar. It was a fine strong hand, and looked like it had known the strings of harps, and many other things besides. Her own hands were on the instrument's arch, the reassuringly solid wood pressing against the palms. The rest will come.

"I believe so. I hope so. Though I know not yet the reason it seems important to me. And--I want to hold on to it."

He understood. He must have understood, from his eyes.

"I am sorry," he said. "I would like to tell you that I can understand, knowing that I cannot. I would like to tell you about this music, and everything else, too, but I do not believe your heart wishes for that. I would like to ask you--well, too many things. I would like to ask you that if, I mean when you remember the melody, all of it, you would play it for me. But that would be presumptuous of me, I think."

Startled, Celebrían looked into his face. It took her a moment, then she shook her head.

"It's only the bare beginning," she said. "But I would still like to play it some more, the little that I remembered, so that I will not forget it again. Please, will you stay awhile, and tell me if I make a mistake?"

Elrond appeared to consider it, then nodded.

"I won't make a sound, then."

She could not but grin just a little, and put her hands to the strings. The familiar opening, and like flowing water the next phrases followed. Elrond remained next to her, listening.

Although he did not realize it himself, she saw that there was the bare trace of a smile playing about his lips.


	5. Five

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With great thanks to Nemis.

* * *

**The Courtship**

.

Five

.

Galadriel was in the garden, staring out toward the open lake beneath the verdant slopes. She stood with her back to Celebrían, straight and still; the glinting gold of her hair and the hem of her dress took the breeze and flickered, gently.

Now out of the darkness there came an image into Celebrían's mind, of Galadriel standing much like this, her head held proud and troubled, gazing to the north. Celebrían had been a grown maiden then, nevertheless Galadriel had kept the deeper fears and thoughts close to herself. It was when the city of holly had just fallen, and there was no news of Celeborn.

"_Suilad,_ my lady," said Celebrían, coming closer. For whatever reasons, she was all of a sudden feeling tight-chested with shyness, and almost fearful. Other words--the one other word--remained elusive within her.

"_Suilad,_ Celebrían." The other's voice was soft and grave. The two of them stood face to face. How was it, wondered Celebrían, that I did not know it after all these days, did not know all along? Do I, in truth, know anything at all?

"How are you?" asked Galadriel, grey eyes warm.

Oh, I am frightened and I am blind, groping and stumbling in this beautiful, unreal world. I am trying hard to work up my courage, and I am foolishly happy.

"I am well," she replied. She paused, wanted to say something more. "I have been finding things, little things in my mind, only bits and pieces, but I am more hopeful now. And I have been talking with Elrond--just a little while before."

Galadriel saw right through her, surely, yet said nothing. She merely took the younger woman's arm, and Celebrían felt herself beginning to relax at the contact, which was light and affectionate. They walked together across the green grass, already grown smooth and flowing under their feet. Out on the lake, an osprey cried, the sound wild and shrill, and distant wings splashed over the waters.

"So, how do you find him?"

Celebrían blinked out of her own thoughts. "Elrond?" she asked, considering the question, and found that she was not sure how to answer. She was never sure of much of anything these days. "Well, he is...very kind."

What a terribly trite statement, of course. One could as easily have said that one's own mother was "very kind". What did she know of Elrond? One who had been a friend from another, insubstantial world, if it had in fact existed? One who would become a friend?

"There was a moment when I nearly thought I recognized him, that he was someone I knew from perhaps a dream, perhaps more. But not quite. There's a feeling about him, quiet, calming, yet somehow when he is present it is--almost as if there is a string that tugs my heart upwards to my throat. Or maybe it's only myself."

She stopped, seeking the right words, and did not find them. It was not what she had meant to say, in any case. They had now come to a stone bench set beneath a great pear tree with branches that stretched wide, and for a while they sat in silence. The tree was in white fire, this time of the year, and sweet petals snowed down onto their hair and laps.

"As if there is a string," mused Galadriel, turning to her with a keen glance. There was something familiar in that keenness, too. It made Celebrían wonder how many things they had not told her, all those hints of what must have been an entire life beyond her reach. She wondered if she would ever speak of them at all. But of Elrond there were no hints or visions, except for that vague tightening of string on her heart. It was merely a figure of speech, she thought. Merely a feeling.

"I cannot explain it well," she admitted. "But am I right?" It was an impulsive question. She was a little surprised to see the other woman smile.

"Why, I do not believe that you can be wrong about this," said Galadriel. But before Celebrían could catch all the possible implications of this reply, she seemed serious once more. "And has Elrond spoken to you--of the past?"

For the first time, Celebrían detected a tentative note in Galadriel's voice.

"Oh, no more than what you have told me. I am still much in the dark."

She said it lightly and with a grin on her face, but there was a brief silence from Galadriel, who then looked quickly down.

"I know how difficult this must be for you, Celebrían," she began, "but please, trust me that it is for the best..."

There was something in that low, calm voice. Celebrían could not have described it, yet in the space of a few words it overcame her, as if a tangled knot inside her had been swiftly shaken loose, and she forgot her fears. The uncertainty that had surrounded and immobilized her no longer mattered, not a whit. She shook her head.

"Oh _Naneth,_ I am so sorry, I did not mean it that way--"

Galadriel lifted her head sharply, halted in mid-sentence, and Celebrían held her breath, returning the gaze. She tried to smile. Only now did she notice her heart racing.

"_Sell-nîn_," whispered Galadriel at last. Her eyes widened. With a quick movement she reached toward Celebrían, as if to touch her face, but drew back her hand again just before making contact. "_Sell-nîn_," she repeated, and then could not speak anymore. In the next instant their arms were around each other, clinging hard.

"_Naneth, Naneth,_ I am here, I am here..."

She kissed her mother's face and brow and hair. Tears scalded her own sight. She felt dazzled, and drenched with a strong, shuddering relief. Oh _Naneth,_ please don't cry, see, I'm here now. _Naneth_. She kept on saying it, that single beautiful word, again and again. She had been lost for so long.

"My child, my Celebrían." Galadriel's voice, fervent and so wonderfully close. "You are safe, you are safe now..."

They sat there on the bench and talked for hours. Before her mother Celebrían laid out her memories, bringing up one by one those bits and pieces that she had collected in her mind, like a child who had been wandering alone in the forest, holding up with nervous and excited hands leaves and small flowers and colourful pebbles, all before the grown-up's eyes. Her treasures were sudden glimpses and sensations, mysterious lines sung or spoken, snippets of dream imagery. Most of them she still could not place, yet there they were, luminous and--strangely, marvellously--far, far more real than they had seemed only a short while ago.

There was a forest. _Malinorni_. I remember because you were clothed in white, _Naneth_, as you are now, and the dress was vivid against the gold above and down on the ground, like flashing snow--

There was the wind and the tide. That was how I knew, _Naneth_, because you were there too. I recall just that one time, that one day--I was twenty, I think--but the voice and the movement of the waves seem so familiar to me. Did we not also sometime dwell by the sea?

There was _Ada_, lifting her onto horseback with effortless arms. She had his eyes, his silver hair. Nearly all the memories she had of him were from her childhood. And then that image of her mother, watchful and worried.

"He is not here," she said. "The last thing I recall of Father was that of a parting, and a city behind us, green and fragrant with holly. There were many fair houses in the city; their windows shone brilliantly with colour in the sunset..."

For the first time she faltered. "Eregion." The sound of the name was still strange to her. "It was Eregion. I knew, though you did not speak of it to me, that you and Father had been talking all through that night--the night before we left the city." She looked up. "It was laid to waste, was it not?"

"I miss him, too, dear child," came the quiet reply, after a pause that was both brief and endless. Celebrían waited. She tried to see her mother's eyes, to decipher that faint tinge of sadness in them. But then those eyes were sparkling again.

"You will soon remember much more of him, I think."

Celebrían closed her eyes. She thought of her father's voice, his hand steadying her. _Relax now, lay your hand against the horse's neck, lightly, lightly, find your balance. There, good, very good. Don't be afraid, I won't let you fall._ Even in her very earliest memories, she had never feared anything while he was there. Gradually, a grin spread across her face.

"I am looking forward to that," she said, feeling a bit ridiculous. Then almost abruptly, "I wish he was here."

"He will be here, one day. How happy he will be to see you, to find you again..."

There was so much more than the simple words. To find me again, her mind repeated.

"Just one more question, _Naneth_."

"Yes?" asked Galadriel. She was already recovering, cautious and protective once more. Without speaking, Celebrían laid her own hand over Galadriel's, lacing their fingers. The two hands, both long and slender, looked as if they were of the same pair. How did I die, _Naneth_? The question rang inside her head, loud and perfectly clear, and she realized that she had not the heart.

"Oh, maybe I will ask you later instead," she murmured.

There was still that same keenness, the same light in her mother's glance, but there was also that same tinge of sorrow--more than a tinge, she could see now. As Galadriel leaned over and embraced her tenderly, Celebrían sensed that her mother had already known the question.

"Ask me when you are ready," whispered Galadriel, "and I will answer."

That night, Celebrían awoke from an unremembered dream shaking and struggling for breath. The heart in her chest was pounding furiously, as if about to escape. For a while, she knew not where or who she was, and the shadows pressed down hard onto her like the sides of an icy cave. Sitting up on the bed with a cry, she brought both hands up to her exposed throat, then over her face. Slowly, she stilled herself. The utter blackness retreated, and one by one the shapes of the room reappeared in the flickering starlight.

"You are safe now. You are safe now," she said out aloud into the air. Only after the words were gone did she realize that they were Galadriel's, from earlier in the day. Although all the windows were open, the ceiling and walls of the chamber troubled her with their weight and solidity. Pulling a robe over her shoulders, she stepped out onto the balcony.

Overhead, clouds were starting to layer in the sky, and the light of the moon and the stars came down in fading patches. Somewhere in the foliage was a nightingale, the same bird who had been trilling nearly every nightfall under her windows, its voice an exuberant cascade of notes. Celebrían took several deep breaths. Beyond the trees, the lake lay pale and peaceful, and there was a premonition of rain in her nostrils.

Footsteps, almost soundless, coming up the path from the shore. She saw Elrond emerge from the woods, his head dark as the clouds. While crossing the little glade beneath the balcony, he raised his eyes, and stopped abruptly in the middle of a step.

"Good evening, my lord." She resisted the urge to tug at her robe, and gave a small wave instead.

"Good morning," said Elrond, not quite immediately, still staring up at her. "Can't sleep?" It sounded like simple enough banter, but before she had a chance to reply, he asked, this time with audible concern in his voice, "Are you well?"

"Oh yes, yes. I am quite well. Thank you." The answer came out rather faster than she had intended. "And yourself, my lord?"

"Ah, I was just taking a stroll along the lake," said Elrond as if it was not an hour and half before dawn.

The moon was briefly uncovered, and Celebrían gazed down at him; the slender figurative string between them grew taut once more. Although nothing visible had changed, she could now see the silent and palpable weariness that was draped over him like a cloak. He wore it well, as if with long familiarity. Suddenly, her heart welled with compassion for him, yet for some reason the feeling discomfited her.

"You should get some rest, maybe." It was the best she could think of at the moment.

Elrond opened his mouth as if to respond, then closed it again without speaking. For an instant she thought he was about to laugh. Finally, he nodded, an odd, wondering expression on his face.

"You are right, my lady," he said in a low voice.

She watched him as he disappeared into the house. The sky was starless now, and a wet breeze from the lake brushed against her clothes. Lifting her face toward the heavens, she let the first waterdrops cool her cheeks. On all the walls, the rain began to patter gently against the creepers. She would not be returning to sleep this night.


	6. Six

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With great thanks to Nemis.

* * *

**The Courtship**

.

Six

.

Flowers fall, even in the Gardens of Lórien. In his first agitation, Elrond had forgotten to keep the days, but the ground was moist and fragrant with petals now. A few days, possibly more. Eight. Nine. Twelve. More than a few.

It had been a morning soon after his arrival--so soon that he had not yet the chance to recover, to tell himself that he was neither dreaming nor still under a spell--when he had come down early after a few fitful, tossing hours, to find Celebrían and Galadriel already sitting together, talking in low tones. It had begun to rain in the night, and the women's hair and dresses glimmered faintly before a curtain of silvery drizzle that swayed gauzy and translucent from the eaves. Celebrían's hands lay in her mother's, motionless and relaxed on her lap; she was speaking, half turned away from him, something quick and inaudible. At that moment, she seemed far more at ease than the last time he had seen her, only a brief while ago in the night. She also seemed so young, much younger than he could ever remember, younger than she had been when they first met. And even at a distance, he could see something different about Galadriel, a soft glow about her face that had not been there for many years.

One glimpse had been all that it required. He had made his excuses, and gone out for another long walk in the rain. To his surprise and shame, he spent nearly all that day wrestling down an abrupt, quietly intense envy. In the forest, the leaves hummed and flowed with green moisture; wandering beneath them he reassured himself that surely, surely his heart could do no other than leap with gladness. This was a wonderful thing. This was what she needed more than anything, a solid island in her uncertainty, an anchor. This was a hopeful sign. He had to give her time. He had to give her space. He had not much else to give her, after all.

At least for now.

"Often, those who return are as children at first, or so it is said, for the days of their innocence come to them before others." Silently he repeated Galadriel's words. She had said them with her hand lightly on his shoulder, voice comforting, as if he'd needed the explanation. Very gentle, very kind. "All her life, all the joys and sorrows--those will follow in their time." But the next words she did not speak out aloud, and he was not sure if she had actually meant to speak them. _Let her have this, for it will be brief, so brief. Let me have this. Please._

"That is as it should be," Elrond had replied, gazing back into her eyes. In all the years past--two ages and counting--he had not seen them come this close to pleading. "Naturally. I understand."

He kept himself to the edges in the days that followed. Already, he was sensing a subtle change in Celebrían, a lessening of her first diffidence, replaced by a certain lightness, the touch of hope. She was spending much of her time together with her mother now. Conscientiously, he guarded his mind before her. At times, he would feel Galadriel's sight upon him, and when he looked at her he would see the hint of gratitude on her face. A quick glance exchanged, and Galadriel would return her attention to Celebrían once more.

He made plans to preoccupy himself, made attempts to read and to explore the Gardens, let the flowers fall and the shade grow thick. He sat and waited in silence while Celebrían practiced fragments of music--fragments that became longer by the day--on the harp. His own heart he kept from flying apart with the reminder that he understood, had to understand, a parent himself. He dreamt and remembered.

He listened to her voice, whenever he could. Every word, every phrase he found himself trying to match against the memories, seeking confirmation that it was, indeed, still the same, that she was the same Celebrían who had reached to him with warm hands and golden laughter, and pulled him into her arms. But he knew he was also listening for signs of change, signs of suffering, signs that this voice had also once been hoarse and broken with pain. A slight shift of intonation, a trace of something yet unrecalled in the clear, full timbre: each small thing startled him inwardly, and brought back a flood of the past. Yet from that past, the voice that returned to him most vividly was not crying out of the emptiness, nor distorted by cold or echoes or the hopeless distances of the mind. It was her voice as he'd first heard it, in the beginning.

"The trees and the grass, and the flying birds--sometimes I feel as if the sight of so many living things would pull my heart right out of me." One day they stood next to each other in Estë's arbour. "I would not have so much of me lie in ruins," she said after a pause. But Elrond shook his head.

"Not ruins," he said, before thinking of his unspoken promise to Galadriel. Their glances touched, and slowly the darkness of her eyes lifted to a smile.

What was it that she had said, sitting next to him by the running Bruinen, that summer when they'd just met?

"Look at the wild grass, so fair and shining with life," that was what she had said. "How fast it grows! You know, while coming across the mountains, we saw the burnt-out ruins of Eregion already covered with flowers. Soon, it seems, the beasts of the woods and the birds in the sky will forget that there ever was a war in the North. But the trees will still remember, perhaps."

What had he replied, watching the bright waters, with her presence beside him as palpable as the white warmth of the midday sun?

"When I first saw you, I thought, here's someone who could not have known Eregion." He had kept his eyes straight on the river. "I was wrong, was I not?"

Celebrían had not responded immediately. "I was a child then," she had said finally. "I remember that when Mother and I left it for Lórinand, I could not understand why Father, who loved forests and wilderness so much more than streets of marble, had to remain behind. Yet I also remember how beautiful it was, the towers, one after another, flashing against the mountain snow, shadows and sunlight playing about the carved gates, and the scent of holly...It was--what I'd always imagined one of the great cities of Beleriand to be like, back in the last age. But I only saw it as a child." She, too, was looking not at him but ahead, at the river and beyond. "And then the ruins."

And what had he seen of Eregion, himself? "We were too late." He heard his own voice as if from a far place, weak words to no avail. "Even from across the valley, the column of smoke filled the sky, and orcs darkened the slopes like ants. Our horses trod over the dead, trying to get to those still living. I remember a woman by the city's west gate, a mother; she was running towards us, but before I reached her two black-shafted arrows struck her in the back. She covered the little child in her arms with her body..." He stopped, taking in a deep breath. "I am sorry. I should not be talking about this."

For a while they did not speak. "And the child?" asked Celebrían.

Elrond turned, and found her thoughtful gaze full upon his face. Then it struck him that he hardly knew her, really, and for an instant he wondered what had come over him.

"The child was saved," he answered simply.

"My lord," said Celebrían, "I have only been in Imladris for a short while. But every day I see people who would not be here if it were not for you--"

"There could have been more."

"And my father is one of them," she finished quietly. A short moment of eye contact, then unexpectedly, Elrond looked away. They fell silent. He stared hard at the Bruinen, snowy eddies that sparkled and flashed at him until his eyes stung.

"I could have done more..."

She had remained sitting there on the grass next to him, and maybe at some point she had leaned over slightly and touched him on arm. But all that had been too far in the past.

Too far in the past, thought Elrond. The waters of Valinor spoke with different voices. Before him, Lake Lórellin extended into the blue; at his feet its rhythmic waves lapped the shore. But these waves held their peace, and asked him no questions.

"Hulloa, over there! Master Elrond!"

Lifting his head, he caught sight of Irmo down the shore, tunic sleeves rolled above his elbows, hair bound behind his head with a scrap of cloth. The Vala was waving.

"Greetings, my lord," Elrond called out, going across. The Master of Spirits beamed at him.

"There is something I'd like you to see."

Beckoning, he led the way through a low, living gate of overhanging boughs in the forest wall and onto a tiny path under the trees. Thick young foliage brushed against them from left and right, but after a few sharp bends of the path, the canopy parted suddenly, and they came upon a small meadow, sweet with new lilies. Across the meadow, several moss-laden steps of stone brought them down to a tall grove of _lairelossë _trees. On three sides, dark ancient trunks rose and formed walls of dense green, but in the middle was a wide space, floored with soft turf and roofed over with high-arched branches. At one end, the ground fell away and opened to a little bay in the lake, silent ripples beneath the shade.

"She is almost ready for the waters. Lovely, don't you think?"

Taking up most of the green floor and still raised on wooden struts was a gleaming new sailboat, slender-hulled among the tools laid out upon the grass and hanging from trunks. The air was fragrant with fresh resin. A sieve of emerald sunbeams through woven leaves above fell upon the folded sail and silver ropes, and the entire sleek shape seemed to stretch toward the cool waters in expectation and longing.

"She's very beautiful," said Elrond.

Irmo grinned, his fair face youthful.

"Nothing compared with the art of Alqualondë, I know, but I've been working on this since winter." His voice was filled with enthusiasm and joyful pride. "Ah, I would tell you of the first time I built a vessel, trying to learn the craft from the Falmarindi, a narrow little rowboat that started to leak just as we--the two of us, Estë and I--left the islands behind for the depths, while the light of Telperion was spread all about us, and upon her face...I've become better since then, though." Raising one hand, the Vala ran his palm lovingly along the smooth wooden body, his eyes tender with memories. "Lórellin is a curious place, you know. Even after all these ages, after each time I thought I knew it all and understood, it always happens that there's some current, some hidden bay or inlet that I did not recall, and the waters, far away in the middle, are always a little deeper than I imagined..."

His voice trailed off. Elrond watched him as he moved around the boat, tinkering with the coiled ropes, picking up a paintbrush occasionally to touch up a plank. Could the boat be the only thing that the Vala wanted to show him?

"Always a little deeper," he repeated slowly. "Like the mind?"

Straightening, Irmo turned to him, seemingly both pensive and half-amused.

"Well, now that you have put it this way...Perhaps, perhaps. Like the mind."

The mind that remembers the wounds. Those had been Estë's words, the very first night of his arrival.

"Why did you bring me here to Lórien, my lord?" he asked.

The Vala arched his eyebrows.

"Why, did you not wish to see her?"

He must know perfectly well that was not at all what I meant, thought Elrond. "Seeing her--seeing her alive, her body whole again, was more than I dared to imagine. Given the facts of her death, and my failure--" he did not continue the sentence. "But the important matter now is quite different, is it not?"

"The important matter?" His own question, flung right back at him.

"Celebrían. It has been only days since she came back; the one that she needs most now is her mother. I do not believe that she needs to be constantly reminded of the wide and painful gulf between what she recalls and what she is, at this moment. I do not believe this tension--subtle, possibly, yet one that I cannot but sense while I am with her--makes the returning of her memories easier. I do not believe," he hesitated for an instant, then decided to go on, "that I can trust myself."

The other Being was looking honestly startled by this. "But she needs you," he said. "She needs you now, I mean. All her past remains with her, even if she cannot yet see it. After all--" He fell silent, and for a while stared almost absently into the distance. "Ah, I fear I am never as good as Estë at this," he added at last.

"My lord?"

"Estë has such a gentle way of talking about healing, and memories, and loss, without making these things seem like mere platitudes, wouldn't you say?" The Vala gave a small sigh, then shrugged. "I have no words that will be of use to you, I must confess."

But Elrond chose to meet his eyes. "Not a word? From the Master of Spirits?"

"They call me that, don't they? Never understood it, myself, for spirits have no master, of course." Irmo shook his head as if in amazement. "Look at the lake, Elrond. I have said that it is a curious place. It is beautiful, too. It draws in the heart. If I had advice to give you, I would say take one of the boats--this one, maybe--and go sailing with her. There are more islands than one can count in this lake; fair and fantastic creatures dwell on each island, and in the deeps. Enjoy yourselves."

"Enjoy ourselves?"

"Well, you are the one who knows her the best, of course." Irmo smiled. "But I suspect she will find it pleasant; Estë always does, or so she tells me..."

Beyond the islands, the horizon was shimmering, half-veiled with a fine new haze. What was it that Irmo had said? Healing, memories, loss. Mentally, Elrond went over each of the words, then once again after he had parted from the Vala. Loss. Then the familiar inevitability of the past.

He had been carried along far too much by the tumult of his own emotions. It was time to think, to sort things out. This was about her. Celebrían.

He knew not for how long he stood on the bank, scanning those fair and mysterious islands for reassurances that were not there, for an invisible sign.

It was time to make his decisions.


	7. Seven

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With great thanks to Nemis, and to all the lovely people who have reviewed.

* * *

**The Courtship**

.

Seven

.

There she was again, slender form slipping without a sound onto the balcony, pale robes in the night breeze, starglow gathering against her hair. One hand raised to her face, brushing aside a few stray locks. At first, he feared that it had been his own pacing that had brought her out from the chamber, but her gaze was turned far-away, apparently unaware of his presence, and he could not see what was in her eyes. As if in a vision the moment stretched softly forever, while he held his breath in silence. Finally, she glanced down.

"_Suilad_, my lady," said Elrond with an incline of his head, hastily flung-up walls about his mind keeping back the questions.

Celebrían caught her breath, going tense and still for a single instant; she did not recognize me, he thought. But then the light shifted about her, flickered, and something changed in her eyes.

"Wait, please," she said quickly.

In a few minutes she was dressed and downstairs, her footsteps quiet along the garden path and through the patched shadows. She sat down beside him upon the wide smooth boulder. Next to them, a small fountain whispered, glossy with moss beneath the moonbeams.

"Do you never sleep, Master Elrond?" She was smiling, but he knew her far too well, even these days.

"And what of yourself?"

Celebrían did not reply, but merely shook her head, and Elrond pressed her no further.

"I must have inherited it from my mother, this sleeplessness," he said lightly, holding the internal walls in place. Her presence here by his side was solid and true. It was only an illusion but right now she felt close, so close that he could almost pretend that she had never been gone after all, and that all he had to do was reach out. "I've become accustomed to it."

"Your mother," asked Celebrían, voice quiet, "she is Elwing the White, is she not? And your father--Eärendil who sails the skies?"

He must have paused for rather too long a moment, then nodded with a grin.

"Has Lady Galadriel already given away all my secrets?"

"Oh yes, my mother did speak of you--when I was just a girl." Her eyes were agleam once more. "And she was not the only one. Loremaster and warrior, councillor to the King, scion of Lúthien the Fair: in truth I must have known your name, lord, ever since childhood days."

"Alas that you will soon also recall that the tales were all much exaggerated--"  
  
He spoke laughingly, but Celebrían flushed a little.

"I feel a fool for not knowing from the first, Master Elrond."

"Just Elrond," he murmured.

"And although my recollections are few and incomplete still, I know you were there, with my father." She did not speak more of it but of course he knew what she meant. "Thank you."

"You've already thanked me years ago," replied Elrond without thinking. "I am only--"

Only your lover. Only the one with whom you shared a life. Only the one who was not there while you lay in that pit surrounded by orcs and dying slowly.

"Only glad that you are here with me, now."

She smiled. A real smile, neither guarded nor tentative this time.

"So am I, my lord...Elrond. And to know that I will remember you."

Was that a promise in her voice? Was that a promise in her eyes?

"What is it that you do remember?" he asked, before the chance to stop himself. "Not about me, or anything that happened afterwards. Just...tell me something. Please."

"Tell you something?"

"Please. Anything."

Celebrían mused briefly. "I was angry at you," she said. "The news that came to Lóriand was contradictory, and ill for the most part. I was disappointed with the King for not having ridden himself to the city's--and my father's--aid, and frustrated with my own mother for her insistence upon that hard and hopeless thing she called a greater duty. It seemed to me, then, that the King's herald had brought too little help and too late, and I doubted, for the first time I think, everything I had learned in my young life about the wise and the great."

"I see." He knew all this well, surely, as well as he had known his own thoughts. Yet despite himself he was startled, perhaps more by the evenness of her voice than by her words.

"But then other news arrived, and better, though not without many tales of sorrow and sacrifice. And then maybe I began to understand a little better. That much I knew."

"And then?"

Pause. "And then," she answered apologetically.

"I am sorry. I promised not to ask you for more."

"I must have wondered greatly about you, then."

"When I first met you," Elrond began. When I first met you I was lost. "You were extraordinarily kind."

"Oh." Her glance was questioning and familiar, too familiar. "Indeed?"

Elrond nodded. When I first met you I never imagined the world.

"Ah, that is good to hear." For a while they looked at each other, neither having the words. "I will think of this, when the past overcomes me," murmured Celebrían at last. As if sensing the conversation was at an end, she rose.

"Well, good night, then?"

The light of the stars flowed loose about her shoulders while she stood there. Speak no more as it was all for the best.

"Good night."

She turned to go. And then Elrond felt it: the tendril of a presence, a tiny shudder in the air. An echo out of a shadowy and unremembered dream. _Don't let go of me._ She could not have possibly been aware of it herself, and even he would not have sensed it but for his heart leaping suddenly before his wakeful mind, for it had been many years, five hundred and nineteen since that autumn morning, with the leaves just tinged with cool dew and the travellers already mounted in the courtyard, and her hands in his. It would be only a brief separation, beloved. _I will return in spring._

"Celebrían?"

She stopped on the path.

"Would you like to come visit Lórellin with me, sometime? I have--there came to me, rather--the notion of taking a boat out onto the open waters, one of these days. Explore all those green islands, perhaps, and the waves. If my companionship is not uncongenial..."

He stopped, watching the expression of her fair face, heart hanging in the balance like the most foolish of youths.

"I would like it very much, my lord." Her reply came gently, almost shyly. "Elrond," she added.

"Thank you."

"Thank _you_. I would be honoured."

Elrond shook his head in amused self-deprecation. "Tell me, then, when you wish for it, my lady?"

"Oh, certainly. I will."

"Good night, then?"

"Good night."

"Rest well."

"And you also, lord," Celebrían replied, and he could have sworn the touch of tenderness in her words was no mere imagining of his. He watched her begin to walk away towards the house. But after a few steps she halted, and stood as if an invisible line drew her and held her still, framed beneath the silvery boughs that slanted over the path. Above, the house's windows were lit only with the reflections of the moon and stars. Celebrían hesitated, seemingly troubled and reluctant to return. Slowly, she turned around and faced him again.

"How about right now?" she asked.

Elrond grinned. It was a quick walk down the trail that led to the lake, and when it divided at the shore, they took the other branch, away from the woods. After a while, they came upon a little dock extending into Lórellin's bright mirror, where a few boats lay moored, bobbing in gentle rhythm. Celebrían chose a small skiff, the ropes were loosed, and the dark shores fell back behind them.

"Elrond?"

A pair of egrets, started by the sound of the oars, flapped away into the mist. The boat glided on, slicing through a rustling patch of new water lilies, and the heavens spread wide over their heads. Celebrían was the first to break their now companionable silence.

"Will you--tell me something of yourself?"

Elrond raised his eyebrows. There was something in that expression, the thought brushed across her mind, something there she could have come close to recognizing.

"It's my turn now, I suppose?" he asked mildly.

"Oh, perhaps." A bit sheepishly, Celebrían nodded with a slight grin. "Please."

Leaning back against the oars, Elrond considered.

"Up there," he said, pointing with one hand at a corner of the sky. "You know, whatever he saw on his journeys, my father would never say. I wonder if he's looking at us right now."

Celebrían, too, lifted her face.

"Eärendil...The brightest, jewel of the world."

"It is a mere speck, a pinprick in the darkness, yet in places the only light." The way Elrond spoke, it was as if he was reciting the words from memory, or maybe they were rising to him on their own. "My father said this to me once, when I first came across the sea to Aman. We spoke long into the night, that time. You see, he--" He shook his head, looking again across the boat at her. "He--and my mother, too, there were so many things they wished to tell me, to explain, but--" 

After a while, she prompted in a gentle voice, "But?"

"But they never needed to explain any of it at all," answered Elrond very quietly.

Celebrían reached forward to touch him, then stopped herself in mid-movement. She turned her head. To the east, the sky was already fading, its edge pale-tinted with milky clouds.

"There," she said, hoping to cover her embarrassment. "Look."

The island, with its dark crown of forest, loomed before them suddenly, though they must have been approaching it for a while. The sky and waters were mingling in the half-glow before daybreak; reflections stirred and glistened as if just about to wake. Noiselessly, a flock of snowy-white birds burst from the treetops, and was gone.

They tied the boat to a willow bent over the water, and sat on the bank. As everywhere in these Gardens, there was a far-away hint of nightingales in the air. Elrond laid back, long limbs stretched out on the grass.

As she watched him, Celebrían could see the tension palpably leaving his shoulders. He was still, staring out into the distance, yet it appeared to her that he was also walking away from her, walking into another place. It must have been a place far in the past, she thought, for his eyes were warm with some fair vision that she could not glimpse.

And then there it was, the memory. She saw Elrond next to her on the little isle, Lórellin all about them vast and veiled in dawn, but at the same time the shore of the lake was the green slope of a mid-summer hill, and she saw him lying with his head against her lap, fast asleep. Somewhere, someone was humming a tune, low and serene and clear with joy. It was her own voice, she realized after an endless heartbeat. She gazed down at Elrond. His hair flowed away from her and spread black against the asters, and the glorious sunlight danced about his face.

He was smiling in his dreams.

Leaning over, Celebrían laid a hand lightly on Elrond's shoulder.

"Look," she whispered, "the sun is rising."

"Ríanna..."

The word came so softly that she might not have heard it. Elrond blinked, the focus of his eyes returning to her as he stepped out of distant paths and back to the present. He stood up, facing the newborn day.

He was a few paces away and so near that it made her heart flutter. It was just the same as what she had felt that first night they met, standing at the door of her chamber by candlelight: as if the waves of a hidden sea had suddenly welled up against her, almost within reach, pressing and calling. But of their words she could decipher nothing.

Taking the hand Elrond offered, she let him pull her up to her feet. Everywhere, the silence of the morning was ablaze with the songs of birds. Celebrían drew a deep breath. The time has come, a voice from nowhere said inside her head.

"Who are you, Elrond?" she asked.


	8. Eight

_Disclaimer:_ All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With very great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading, and to all the lovely people who have reviewed.

* * *

**  
The Courtship**

.

Eight

.

"Who are you, Elrond?"

She asked the question as if it was the simplest thing in the world. He had realized days ago that this had to come sooner or later, but now as she stood there staring straight into him, face to face, Elrond was almost unable to meet her eyes. His heart constricted once, hard, then held still. Maybe she already knew, knew everything.

"I am a friend, Celebrían," he replied. "What else I was, or might have been, is not important right now. It is your path--your memories, your world that you must find again, and I can only--"

The speech he had prepared was but empty nonsense, and he did not continue. He turned his face aside so that she would not see his eyes, but Celebrían, too, moved slightly, so that she was still before him. He looked down. At their feet, the grass caught the light of morning, vivid as jewelled blades.

"Who are you?" she repeated, more softly this time.

She was still watching him, Elrond knew, watching and waiting patiently like she had always done, a long time ago. Back then he had made her wait half an age for an answer. Neither of them moved. And then suddenly the walls just weren't holding anymore. He lifted his head and saw her, standing before the blue Lórellin with her hair in the breeze and the dew. She was as young as the sun.

An eternity passed, and Celebrían was the one who lowered her gaze.

"Your eyes," she said slowly. "Your eyes have spoken."

"Celebrían," he began again. Then his voice failed him again.

She did not respond immediately. When the next question came it was only a whisper.

"Were we wed?"

"We were. For the greater part of an age."

Abruptly, Celebrían turned and took a few steps away along the water's edge, then almost as abruptly halted again.

"I feel a fool, for not knowing from the first." Somehow she squeezed out a tiny grin at him, but her voice was tight and dry.

"All these days, Ríanna, if I could come just a single step closer, I would have lost myself in the blink of an eye. If I could speak and say something, anything to you, I would have said--everything. But I could not. I cannot."

"Will you walk a little with me? About the island?" she asked. Perhaps she had not heard him at all.

They walked without speaking for a while by the shore, the lake's flashing expanse to their left, the forest to the right with its shadows. Elrond hung back, wordlessly berating himself for his weakness of the last few moments, while Celebrían's gaze remained firmly on the ground before her, never glancing back, but whenever he began to lag she would slow as well. The island was tiny, and in no time at all they were once more by the slanting willow to which they had tied the boat.

"I apologize for my discomposure just now, Elrond."

It was not what he had expected yet characteristic of her. For what it was worth, he was grateful that she still addressed him simply by name, no retreat into strangers' courtesies. They stopped.

"And I also," he replied, thinking rationally once more. "Not so long ago, I told you that I could never know the things you were going through, no matter how much I wished for it. I still remember this. My foolishness and confusion are my own and of course you do not need them added to your troubles--that much I understand. I expect nothing and I will not--"

"That was not what I meant," said Celebrían. She was looking at his face again. "That was not what I meant," she repeated. "I am sorry. The knowledge of this was...It was stunning to me. But I saw--I remembered seeing--I saw you there in the sun, asleep. At peace. And...it was brief but my heart felt full of light."

At first, Elrond merely stared at her. Relief, then hope, then the knowledge that neither relief nor hope was somehow the right thing raced in succession through his mind.

"That I remember, too," he said.

She smiled, faintly but she actually smiled. Neither of them quite noticed it but they had begun to walk again, slowly and side by side, towards the middle of the island this time. The trees spread silent and tall above them, and after only a few yards the light of the lake was lost in another world. The morning faded back to stars, and from somewhere in the distance--much more distant than possible, given how small the island had seemed a moment ago, a part of Elrond noted irrelevantly--the breeze brought the floating trace of a song, intermittent, voice of some hidden bird that he could not name.

"Did we--do we have children, Elrond?"

Although it sounded like a question she was not asking one, not really. To his own surprise, Elrond found that he had recovered his poise. His mind was ramparted again and he was ready to answer, or so he thought.

"We have two sons," he replied. "We have a daughter. They tarry still in Middle-earth, for a while longer."

His voice was calm now and the words came smoothly, and he hated himself for it, yet it was not a lie. The thing was that it was not even a lie, strictly speaking, in Arwen's case.

"She has your eyes," said Celebrían softly.

"I'm sorry?"

"I caught a glimpse of her. In memory, or rather in a vision before me. She was only a little girl but now I know, now I am sure. She has dark hair like yours, and grey eyes. Like yours."

This time, the inward defences held. "You will know," he replied. "She will come to you, just as you remembered. As a child, as she grew up before you eyes."

He did not know what else he could have said to her. Celebrían nodded slowly. Then she said, a quiet and too-obvious statement, "There is much that you have not told me."

For an instant, Elrond feared that she had sensed something from him after all. He tried to think of something reassuring to say, but Celebrían continued, "I wish I can give you an answer this moment, Elrond, the answer you want. I wish it never happened, whatever it was that killed me, and you did not have to see me like this. But please, do not say more. Not now."

"I will wait," Elrond said, then realized immediately that even such a few words carried too many implications. Celebrían, too, must have heard it, but though he used to be able to read her eyes he could no longer.

"Shall we?"

The lake turned out to be only a short hundred yards or so back along the path, although Elrond could have sworn that they had walked a long way into the woods. They emerged from under the canopy into white daylight, blinking. She would not know yet, not about Arwen nor about what had happened, Elrond told himself, for the walls about his heart were still there and he could feel them. But the truth was that he wasn't sure. Maybe they had been long gone without his knowing, melted in the silver sun that already blazed high in the sky. But he could still feel them like lost limbs.

"I wish you to know, Celebrían, that for all that we shared--all that we had together, back in Middle-earth, I expect nothing from you, now or ever," he said when they had pushed away from the island, and the wide waters of Lórellin were once again spread about them. "Whatever my feelings, I wish you to know that if you find your heart troubled or pressured even in the least by my presence, if you believe that you would regain yourself more easily without me--just speak. I will leave the Gardens and go back to Tirion with no further questions."

"I want you to remain."

"Do not let the generosity of your heart prompt you to speak too quickly. Think about this, please. Tell me what you would have another time."

For the remainder of their return she was silent, and the only sound was that of splashing oars upon the waters. The shore approached, its shades of green coming alive in the sun. These trees had been only shadows when they last left in the night.

"Don't let go of me."

Elrond glanced up. They were on the dock tying up the boat. "Last night," said Celebrían, eyes focused on the ropes and the oars, not on him, "it seemed that I escaped out of an endless, cold place, where I could see nothing though my eyes were open. Yet it sank away from me as I woke, and the only things I still knew were the words. Don't let go of me. I knew I was saying them, over and over again in--that darkness. And now...I believe I was saying them to you." She let out her breath, almost a sigh. "So, selfishly, I want you to remain."

"Well, I won't let go," began Elrond, nearly managing to keep his voice quick and light. "But maybe later you will tell me that things have changed. I will understand." He wanted to say more, much more, but Celebrían turned to him, something almost defiant in her face, and he sensed that she was the one regretting a momentary weakness now.

"I will not let go of you," he said, nothing else. Celebrían looked at him, then nodded.

"Thank you," she whispered.

For the short walk back to the house, he made himself refrain from offering her his arm. At the path's end, they found Galadriel sitting in the garden, next to the little fountain where the two of them had talked together in the night. There was a book on her lap, but it looked like it had been opened to the same page for hours. Rising to greet them, she smiled, but both Celebrían and Elrond saw right away the worry in her eyes.


	9. Nine

With great thanks to Nemis, and also my very deep apologies for the long delay.

* * *

**The Courtship **

.

Nine

.

They were draped with new sunbeams, and the morning dew was in their hair. They seemed as young and innocent as children to Galadriel's eyes as she rose to greet them, yet it could have only been a trick of the light.

"Will you let me speak to Elrond for a while, dearest?"

Celebrían hesitated, but only for an almost imperceptible instant.

"About me, _Naneth_?" she asked lightly, seemingly in jest. But Galadriel could not help noticing that she had taken another step forward, as if by instinct, and was now standing between Elrond and her mother.

"_Sell-nîn_, please," began Galadriel.

"Celebrían--"

"Elrond has been nothing but extraordinarily generous in all his words and deeds," said Celebrían quickly, remaining in the same spot. "And though we talked of many things he has told me nothing that--"

"It's all right, Celebrían," murmured Elrond needlessly.

"Nothing that my heart was unprepared to receive."

Elrond drew in a sharp breath. Something in her daughter's words caught Galadriel by surprise, though it never should have. The revelation of what must have been spoken between them in the night flashed upon her--with a twinge of fear, despite herself.

"I have known Elrond since well before your birth, you know, and I will not eat him," she said with a grin. "I will return him to you soon and completely unharmed, I promise."

Celebrían's gaze went from one of them to the other. She did not laugh.

"What happened at my death?" she asked. The question was out of nowhere but in an even voice, addressed to both. "What was it, that you need to tread so cautiously around me?"

"You remember it?"

"That I died? It is clear, is it not?" Celebrían spun to face Elrond. But it took only a moment for her to relent; his eyes looked frankly stricken. "I do not remember it--not the thing itself, not yet. But I know. I know that it must have been in a lightless place. I know that I must have been in pain." Her voice grew softer. "But I do not think that I am such a fragile thing. Not anymore."

Galadriel felt something twisting within her breast, a little more tightly with each of her daughter's words. But she had to hold her ground.

"I do not believe it was you that grew fragile, my child."

Slowly, Celebrían let out a long breath, almost a sigh. She nodded.

"I'll be nearby, _Naneth_," she said.

She reached to Elrond and touched him lightly on the arm, to all appearances nothing more than what would have been unremarkable between mere friends. Then she came over and embraced her mother, her arms tightening for several breaths as if trying to prove how solid and real she was. Galadriel wanted to hold on and never let go again, but the moment passed, and Celebrían pulled away gently. She paused as if about to speak, but then appeared to have thought the better of it. She walked away from them toward the house.

By now the garden was already flooded over with white sunlight. Elrond crossed to the fountain, and they sat down next to each other. He waited for her to begin.

"It's happening too fast."

It was not quite the opening that she had prepared. Patiently, he kept waiting.

"Her sojourn in Mandos was not a long one, given the...way of her death."

Elrond glanced up at her sharply.

"Do you mean that she was not ready?"

"If she has returned then she must have been ready. Or so I have been told," said Galadriel. Yet even as she was repeating Irmo's words she was once more troubled by them. A Vala's logic indeed. "Yet I cannot but wish that she be fully fortified with life before the knowledge of torment and death returns to her also." She debated with herself for an instant, then added, "And I cannot but wish that I knew how to keep her heart from breaking."

Elrond did not reply immediately, staring away into the distance. Finally he said, very quietly,

"It was not her heart that was broken."

"No, _ion-nîn_, not her heart." For the first time in a long, long while, she found herself struggling for words. "But what of yours?"

Elrond could not answer her, but he did not need to. Although neither spoke of it both of them recalled her first question to him, back when he had just arrived at the Gardens.

"You are the one for whom I fear, _ion-nîn_."

"It is not only for me you fear." His voice was matter-of-fact and still very quiet. "For all the memories of Elvendom there are no foregone conclusions. For all the love in Arda our own demons are still too precious to let go. You see the path before her, as dangerous as back when she was young and just beginning to take notice of a man who was too guarded, too solitary, too heavy in the soul. More dangerous than ever."

What could she say to him that had not already been said in the last three _yéni_ and half, while the clouds gathered over Middle-earth and the storm broke? Only that there could come a day when they would sit together by Lake Lórellin, speaking in such paltry and halting words of Celebrían, who was so near that they--both of them--could sense her presence, barely beyond the consciousness of their minds. So she only answered honestly, "Yes."

For a while neither of the two spoke. The light of Valinor fell dancing before Galadriel's eyes, brilliant and pure and grown so unfamiliar since the time of her own youth. The air was utterly still except for the distant whispering of the waters.

"I don't know how to do this."

Elrond turned his head and studied her face hard, brows furrowed, but if he was startled by the confession he did not show it otherwise. Something about his countenance reminded Galadriel suddenly of the first time she'd seen him, on the Isle of Balar at the end of the First Age. He had been little more than a boy at the time, yet she had been struck by the look of his eyes, how watchful and wary they had seemed.

"My lady, once upon a time many years ago, you told me something of Celebrían." She could tell he was choosing each word with care. "You told me that she would carry burdens meant for others, for that was the way of her heart. Yet you rued the thought that it might have been decreed to her by fate also."

Yes, that had been many years ago, after the first war in Eregion, after Imladris. Without warning, there flashed across Galadriel's mind an image of her daughter, maidenly and aglow, in flawless detail down to the strand of glinting hair fluttering against her face in the sea-wind. The day was fading over Edhellond in a last bloom of rosy twilight, but out on the balcony Celebrían, engrossed in her writing, had lit no lamps. The nib of her quill scratching the thick sheaf of parchment in soundless concentration. She stopped awhile, biting her lips in thought, then dipped the quill into the inkwell to begin yet another fresh page. A letter, even back then Galadriel knew right away, though she stood gazing at her daughter across the beach. The courier was to depart for Imladris in the morning.

"And I recall my own reply at the time," continued Elrond with a short, half-hearted laugh. Though the vision was fleeting he must have caught a glimpse of it too, through her eyes. "I promised you--promised _her_--all of Endorë and all of Aman, and then the Two Trees and each one of Varda's own stars into the bargain. I spoke every kind of wild words, yet I spoke nothing but the mere truth. I want to repeat all those promises to you right now, this very moment, but how can I, when I have already failed them? I want to simply tell you that all her pain and sorrows are gone and in the past, and that I will bring her nothing but joy, but how I, after all that has happened? How can it be that--"

"Elrond," said Galadriel, laying a hand lightly on his arm. He stopped in mid-sentence, and for the space of a single heartbeat it was again the wary-eyed youth from Balar who met her gaze. "There was a time when I wished to hear all the reassuring words from you. But now I see her..." She shook her head, not saying whether that time had been an age and half ago or this morning. "I see now truly that it is in her own strength that we must trust. You do not need to give me assurances. Not any more."

Elrond let out a slow breath. He did not look away.

"Well, good." Another short laugh, but his voice was not quite in jest. "Because I cannot give you any. Not really."

"Forgive me. Ever since I came here I have felt so--weak." She left the rest of her confession to the glimmering silence of the air. "I would have trusted you with the fate the world," she said at last.

"I know." Elrond grinned, though only faintly. Then after a pause, "You did."

Off in the sky, a lark began to trill, its flight of notes as glorious as the day. Galadriel felt a moment of wordless rapport pass between them, and her heart lifted, if only for a brief while. As if of its own accord, her mind returned to the years flowing like sand, three ages of Endorë with all their weights and shadows. But everything was different now.

"At times, Elrond, it appears to me that the weight of time has fallen from her, and she is again as young as the girl that once ran upon the silver edge of the sea, before my very eyes. It is only an illusion, isn't it?"

Elrond shook his head without answering in words. Perhaps there was the trace of a smile flickering about his eyes.

"You speak of joy, but she has joy to bring to you also," said Galadriel gently as she rose. "Be young with her, _ion-nîn_."

Turning away from his thoughts, she walked across the garden and back to the house. She crossed the columned corridor, wrapt in her own musings, then halted at one of the arched doorways.

Her daughter stood alone across the room, motionless by the silent harp. She held her back straight, a hand laid across the forgotten instrument, fingers curled around the painted arch. Galadriel could not see her face, nor did Celebrían seem aware that her mother stood in the doorway, watching her. There was a tension in her still form, as if she had been long lost in thought, or perhaps lost in other unreachable places, far away from all the rest of the warm, living world.

One ocean and five hundred nineteen years away from Imladris. No great distance after all, thought Galadriel, nothing but the blink of an eye, a faint, shimmering veil of time as impalpable as that between one spring and another autumn. The autumn had turned to winter so soon that year.

She had let the children cry against her shoulders until their tears were exhausted. She had kept her arms around her husband each night, when the memories of their child's life came and went and flickered in the darkness, and the weight of their echoes grew beyond bearing. She had held Elrond's hands in the rain, forced him to meet her eyes and told him to keep on living. She had tended to the wounded and comforted the grieving, for Celebrían had not been the only one loved in Imladris and lost in the ambush. She had not been able to weep.

One day, she and Celeborn had found Arwen in Celebrían's study, standing before the desk spread with papers and books--just the same as her mother had left it. Their granddaughter held a scrambled sheaf of loose pages in her hands, although she was not looking at them, but was staring away fixedly at the walls. She started at the sudden awareness of her grandparents' presence, but then attempted a small, brave smile.

"I thought...perhaps I should put away some of _Naneth_'s things. I saw that _Ada_--"

Her voice faded. For a moment, the silence about the walls of the room was as palpable as Celebrían's absence.

"I don't understand it," said Arwen. She stopped, tried to reassure them with another smile, although it came out as a tired little grimace. Then she repeated the same words, and then again, "I don't understand it. I don't understand it."

They comforted her with hugs and soft words, and once more the litany of platitudes that had seemed to flow so constantly, those days. That no parting was eternal, and that time would heal all grief. That there was no more torment where Celebrían had gone. That it was up to the living to continue...

Arwen was her mother and father's child. She returned her grandparents' gaze, a light deep in her eyes but not that of tears. She had heard these things many times already but it was good to hear them again. They could see her gathering her inward strength once more, as drawing a quick breath, willing it back. Gently, they began to guide her toward the door. As Arwen stepped away from the desk, the forgotten sheets of paper slipped from her hands and dropped to the ground. Galadriel picked them up and glanced down.

The top page was in her daughter's hand, written right to left for music. Two themes for a single harp, the first phrase gentle and slow, searching and dipping downwards, while the second voice entered in response, the two gradually twining into one. The lines had been penned swiftly, the writing almost rough, apparently a first draft but without corrections. The ink had already started to fade from time. But Celebrían must have revisited it recently, if only by chance, for here and there along the margins she had scribbled a few phrases and lines, the writing still nearly fresh, apparently from just before her departure this autumn. Something about the harvest..._Asters brim the fields now, and the new dew has begun to grow pale with the moon..._Various inconsequential, daily things, nothing more than absent-minded notes. _In Lórinand the mellyrn must have not yet turned to gold..._

The pages fluttered out of Galadriel's fingers, and then abruptly she sat down on the floor. The air had turned colder than the Helcaraxë. She braced her hands against the ground and tried to get to her feet again, but the grain of the wooden floor kept on swirling and dissolving before her eyes. It was no use. Nothing was solid anymore.

She did not hear Arwen cry out, kneeling next to her, nor Celeborn's voice, quietly asking their granddaughter to step outside and close the door. She did not hear any of his words, though his arms had closed around her tightly. The only thing she could see was a pale body torn with many wounds, and she saw it with an infinite and hopeless clarity even though it lay underground and there was no light, not a trace of light. The cuts and gashes were upon her own body, and the lifeless broken thing was her own blood and bones. Down there on the floor, she shook and shivered in her husband's embrace, rocking rhythmlessly, her fingers clawing at his shoulders in silence. But still the tears never came.


	10. Ten

_Disclaimer: _All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

With great thanks to Nemis, both for beta-reading and for inspiring such a great part of my thoughts about this story.

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**The Courtship**

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Ten

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Lórellin trembled with twilight as far as eyes could see, a field of living gold gradually dimming to pearls. Everywhere along the shore, the forest was aflush, tinted with dusky summer clouds. The boughs whispered and sighed, their lustrous leaves laced in intricate patterns upon the waters, ever weaving, ever shifting.

After she had kept perfectly still for a long while, the ripples, too, stilled their motion. The lake was no longer transparent, but seemed to deepen to infinity, both receding and swelling up toward her at the same time. One by one, the scattering of young stars flashed their last, then went out like candles burnt to the end. There was no wind now.

Sitting upon a wide boulder that jutted out from the bank, Celebrían peered down, holding her breath. Her own reflection had disappeared, as had all the shimmering lights of the sky, and the only sound left was the steady beating of her own heart. The water was crowded over with inky shadows.

The noise of grating metal, barely audible and thick with echoes as if out of a distant underground cave, but coming closer. The air had turned chilly, almost freezing. Across the stagnant black surface, all the way down in the chasm's fathomless depths, she glimpsed movement, fitful and blurred by the dim glow of torches. A sudden cacophony of laughter mingled with the clanging of iron, harsh and contemptuous. It, too, was coming closer.

The water was rising. A moment ago it had been level with the edge of her perch, but now the murky rivulets were brimming over, snaking toward her and widening, joining into pools, soaking her clothes. Already the coldness covered her legs and was creeping up to her waist, slowly, inexorably, then she could no longer feel it. She could no longer feel anything.

Celebrían's fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms. She forced herself to stay motionless, not looking away and hardly breathing. Now there were faces in the eddies, yellow eyes glinting. Guttural growls like a rumbling in the ground, and a rattle of bones. There were so many of them. A stench of decomposition stung her nostrils. The nearest one snarled, baring its teeth. They were stained with raw blood.

Exhaling shakily, she braced her hand against the rock and tried to push herself up to her feet, but swirling currents were wrapped around her legs, keeping her down like tentacles. As she struggled once more to stand, a hand touched her shoulder. It felt warm and solid.

"Listen. Listen to the nightingale," whispered a voice next to her ear.

Overhead on a hanging branch, an evening bird was warbling; its melody pierced the hush like a luminous needle. Leaning forward rapidly, Celebrían touched the water's surface. A flash of argent flames burst upon the lake, spreading out from her fingertips in swift widening circles, reaching the horizon in a single instant. The crisp air brushed her face. A pale sliver of moon had risen high into the heavens, and the world was awash with starlight.

The sound of her own heartbeat reverberated, as loud as a drum, but she was breathing again. Turning her head, Celebrían saw Elrond's face, eyes quietly anxious.

"Lady Estë told me I would find you by the lake," he said.

In her relief, Celebrían only managed a small grin. But before she could find a suitable reply Elrond asked, voice quick and gentle, "What did you see?"

With a beating of wings, the nightingale took flight for a more secret perch. A splash of shadow fluttered across the waves.

"Shapes," she said, then paused. "Blades, clashing iron. Teeth and claws. I have not seen them so clearly before, nor so close."

She did not continue, but it was obvious that he'd understood her meaning right away, from his face. At the same moment both of them realized how near they were, she still in a sitting position upon the ledge, Elrond kneeling before her, the breeze touching his dark hair. With a sudden awkwardness he drew back slightly, and for a while stared without a word past her shoulders at the lake; she could see its light mirrored in his eyes.

"I have not thought that the waters of Lórien would reflect such sights."

"Actually, I don't think it is the waters," said Celebrían.

Her glance met his, and almost immediately Elrond turned away again. He did not smile.

"You used to always make light of the strangest things." There was a curious tightness in his voice.

"Oh. Did I?" Once more, Celebrían was not sure of what to say, and again the silence lengthened, stretching out between them. Perhaps she only wanted to explain the strange compulsion to herself.

"It has been growing more difficult of late, yet each time I find that I must look, no shying away nor shutting of the eyes, right down there--" with one hand she gestured at the now shining expanse next to them, "--down into the darkness. I must steel myself for what will follow. I must know. It is the only way."

For a time, Elrond did not speak. When the response finally came it was very quiet, and surprised her utterly.

"I am afraid, Celebrían."

At the last instant, she suppressed the urge to reach over to him, though the space between them was only a foot or so. But it was she who lowered her gaze now.

"Don't be," she whispered.

"What will you see?" he asked after another pause. The question was unanswerable, of course, and she was not even sure that he was really asking it of her, nevertheless she considered it in earnest.

"What will you have me see?"

"It is not for me to say," replied Elrond. Yet he was no longer averting his eyes, and briefly Celebrían caught something in them that belied the words.

"If I seek not the shadows then they will seek me," she answered, furrowing her brows. Her voice was slow and measured, as if reciting lines that had been long buried deeply within. "And the shadows are not all that I seek, though I go into the abyss--"

She rose to her feet, and held out a hand down to Elrond, this time without wavering.

"Those words I remember, because once upon a time you wrote them to me," she said.

Elrond took her hand, rising also, so that they stood face to face in the moonlight. When she did not let go he hesitated for a single heartbeat, then his fingers wrapped around hers.

"How grievous to me, then, that only my mind and spirit shall follow you into the abyss." The sound of his reply, too, was soft, yet it echoed to her across the days and years of Middle-earth, as clearly as if she had known it all along. "Yet though I chafe at my lot, I will await you. I will await you through the midnight and the storm and the dawn. When you return, I will be here. Those words _I_ remember."

Faint upon the wind, there came an intermittent sparkle of notes from hidden places: the night singer was already far away. The feeling that was welling up inside her was like new sunlight pooling down to earth through clouds in the wind. It was different--so different--from the fear she knew, just the same it made her body shiver and her heart race.

For fifteen hundred years they had seen each other but infrequently. Celebrían had been the one to write first. At the very beginning the letters had been carefully, acutely no more than courteous, as befitting two people who had known each other just a short while, but then they had grown halting and tentative, then they had grown longer and longer. How amazing that now, after all those volumes, it was such a struggle to form even one right word.

"I must thank you," was the only thing she could find to say. "For helping me back just now."

Elrond smiled, shaking his head. But she needed to go on.

"I must thank you, my lord," she stumbled a little but kept trying. How did it go? Yes. Indeed she had known it all along. "For your kindness to me and to my parents. After the ruins of Eriador the beauty of the deep-cleft valley gladdened my heart, although such a statement from a young, naïve girl must appear hopelessly simple-minded to you. Do you recall? That was--"

"Soon after you left Imladris," murmured Elrond. "Only a few lines. But I was so startled that I could write nothing in return, except that it was merely my duty."

She had travelled across Middle-earth with her parents, following Anduin and her mother's restlessness. Even then it had seemed that she beheld the forests and the rivers and the seasons with changed eyes.

"We shall depart again in the morning--this year we shall not see the _mellyrn_ blossoms canopied over the land, miles after miles like brocade of gold upon pillars of snow." The clutching phantasms passed, and with each syllable she gained strength. The words no longer slipped from her, but flowed of their own accord, fifteen hundred years' worth of words falling into place. "For here the _malinorni_ from the Blessed Land have already grown tall..."

"It was early spring, nearly two _yéni_ later. You wrote from Lorínand; my answer reached you in Belfalas." Elrond, too, spoke from memory, the past fair as a dream in his voice, and as real as the warmth of his hand. "In my own youth they told me of the _malinorni_ that had flourished on the plains near Gondolin, already lost to legend, yet once as mighty as the groves at the foot of the Pelóri. But Beleriand has fallen beneath the waves, and Aman lies distant across the sea. I do not know if I shall ever see the Blessed Land, nevertheless I shall ask you of the sea..."

"By the sea I watched, straining my gaze out to the farthest edge of sight, yet in my mind I cannot picture Valinor. Not after all that my mother has told me, but that it must be far more beautiful than I can imagine, more beautiful than the Middle-earth that I love. Men of the West--people of your kin--still come through the harbour, but these days few of them look upon us without fear in their eyes, and the shores of Númenórë have not seen an Elven ship in many of their generations..." When had that been? "Another two hundred years. We met again in Lindon, at the High King's court--"

"We barely found chance to talk. But one afternoon the two of us walked along the beach. The tide was ebbing..."

White breakers upon white sand, and the scent of salt caught in their clothes. By the sunset she had seen that the weight of the years had increased in his eyes. But he would never mention his burden in the letters.

"You told me of them, the people of your kin," whispered Celebrían. He had spoken to her at length about them that day. She had tried to think of something comforting to say and failed, then she had turned to him and laid her hand over his. But after a while--unlike now--he had pulled away, gently and with his emotions under firm control once more.

"My father's star rose, and you lifted your hand and pointed it out to me." Elrond's tone was hushed, cautious, as if he did not quite dare to pronounce the sentences. "And you asked me..."

"What must he think of us, down here in Middle-earth? What must the ones in Valinor think of us, they who dwell in unstained joy? That we are fools, perhaps? Stubborn? Proud?"

"I do not believe that they would find us foolish. I believe they would understand." It had been over three thousand years but the answer was exactly the same, down to the very phrases. "For what we love, they love also."

"And for this love I shall not turn aside from the blackest night, nor all the anguish it holds--"

"When you return, I will be here," repeated Elrond. It was the last letter she had written him in the Second Age, but she had said it to him, too, face to face and not knowing if he would in fact return. It had been in Imladris, with the sun brilliant upon the banners of the gathered armies, upon the swords and spears and the armour. She had made her way through the crowd and stood beside his horse; he had reached down and taken her hand in his. But this had been the only sentence she'd found time to utter, for the host had already begun to march, and they had to let go.

Celebrían looked up. The forest was aglimmer above them, fragrant with the tender music of leaves and branches. To the other side, the waters widened out to an endless horizon, and the silvery shadows melted away into the firmament, glorious with stars.

When she had been a girl she'd thought the very notion scantly possible, yet here they were. They had come to Valinor after all.


End file.
